The Soviets' futile search for the real Hitler corpse
T
The Hitler suicide
story was used by
the British as a
weapon of
psychological
warfare to discredit
National Socialism
and stifle the
German people's
will to resist foreign
occupation.
Part 3 of 3
by Giordan Smith © 2007
Email: giordansmith@gmail.com
FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008
he evidence I have discussed so far establishes that, during the last days of the
Third Reich, multiple cremations were carried out in the Reich Chancellery
grounds in front of sundry witnesses who had been persuaded to believe that the
bodies they saw being cremated were those of Adolf and Eva Hitler. It would
also appear that Heusemann and Echtmann, the two dental workers associated with
Hitler's dentist, Professor Blaschke, deceived themselves into thinking that they possessed
sufficient expertise to identify the human remains recovered by the Soviets as those of
Adolf and Eva Hitler. The progress of the Soviet investigation was so rapid, however,
that it had begun to fall apart even before the problems with Heusemann's and Echtmann's
evidence could have been detected.
The Soviets' problems began on 8 May—the day the autopsy of the putative Hitler remains
was carried out—when a "bullet-torn and battered body of a man identified as Hitler" was
found in the ruins of the bunker.1 An American war correspondent, Joseph ("Joe") W. Grigg,
Jr, proudly announced from Berlin that Hitler's body had almost certainly been found. Grigg
was soon forced to retract his scoop, however. On 10 May, he reported that "[f]our bodies,
blackened and charred, that seem to answer to Hitler's general appearance have been dragged
out of the [Chancellery] ruins". He observed that "none has been identified as being
definitely that of the Nazi Fuehrer". Considering that within five days they had found six
corpses, any one of which could have been Hitler's, Grigg's conclusion was appropriately
pessimistic: "...the Russians are beginning to believe that no body that can be identified
without any shadow of doubt as that of Adolf Hitler ever will be found now".2
It is no small indication of the difficulties the Soviets experienced that, within a month
of being discovered, the corpses initially taken to be those of Hitler and his wife had been
buried, unburied and reburied no less than three times. They were first buried at an
undisclosed location near Berlin, then exhumed and moved to Finov in the Soviet Union,
and then exhumed and reburied in Rathenau, Germany, on 3 June 1945. Nor did their
travels end there. A month later, they were taken to Friedrichshagen, Germany, where
one of Hitler's bodyguards, Harry Mengershausen, was asked to look at them for
identification purposes. It would be hard to account for this macabre travelling show if
the Soviets were sure that the bodies they had found were really those of the Hitler couple.
In early June, the substantial scale of the hoax became apparent when it was revealed
that the bunker had been littered with bodies of numerous individuals dressed in Hitler's
trousers. On 9 June, during a press conference attended by British, American, French and
Russian reporters, the Soviet military commander Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov admitted
that they had "found no corpses which could be Hitler's". The Soviet commandant of
Berlin, Colonel-General Nikolai E. Bezarin, explained that the Russians had "...found
several bodies in Hitler's Reich Chancellery with the Fuehrer's name on their clothes... In
Hitler's Chancellery we found, in fact, too many bodies with his name on the clothes. It
got to be a joke. Every time I would find a pair of pants I would say, 'These are Hitler's'."
Zhukov told the reporters that he now considered it a serious possibility that Hitler had
escaped Berlin by air. "He could have taken off at the very last moment, for there was an
airfield at his disposal," he said.3
Strikingly, one of the planted corpses could have belonged to Hitler's arch-enemy,
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the duplicitous head of the A b w e h r (German military
intelligence) who was tried and sentenced to death for complicity in the 20 July 1944
assassination plot. In December 1950, Canaris's adjutant, Willy Jenke, told British author
www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 35
Ian Colvin that he had just received fresh information about
Canaris's fate from a former acquaintance, Johannes Toeppen,
who had been the Abwehr's chief accountant. Toeppen told Jenke
that "Canaris was seen in Berlin about April 20th [1945] under
close escort and...that he was subsequently told that the Admiral
had been shot and buried in a bomb crater on April 23rd at a time
when Hitler was ordering some of the last executions".4 It would
be incredibly ironic if the male corpse autopsied by the Soviets on
8 May 1945 had actually been that of Admiral Canaris.
By June 1945, the Soviets could be virtually certain that they
had not found Hitler's corpse. From that point onwards, however,
rather than acknowledging the prospect that Hitler's body might
never be found, Stalin endorsed the idea that Hitler had escaped
from the bunker. While attending the Potsdam Conference in
Berlin in July 1945, during conversations with US Secretary of
State James F. Byrnes and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy,
Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stalin expressed
the firm conviction that Hitler was still alive. In fact, in August
1945, he accused the British of "concealing the real, living Adolf
Hitler in their sector of Berlin".5
The origins of the suicide legend
During the last week of April and
first few days of May 1945, the world
laboured under considerable
uncertainty as to Hitler's whereabouts.
Reports that Hitler had gone to Berlin At the other extreme,
to conduct the city's defence were a British Foreign Office
dismissed as propaganda. Among
numerous reports published spokesman dismissed the
concerning this subject, several idea that Hitler had
claimed that Hitler was already dead.
The first such report came from a gone down fighting as the
"high diplomat" who had reached "most complete nonsense".
safety in Switzerland; on 28 April, he
said that Hitler and Goebbels had
been shot three days earlier. 6 The
next day, papers reported that according
to a "high British source" Himmler had had Hitler poisoned.7
The first official pronouncement on Hitler's fate came at 10.27
pm on 1 May 1945, when Admiral Karl Doenitz declared over
Hamburg radio that Hitler had "fallen at his command post in the
Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and
for Germany". Until they learned about this broadcast, the Allies
apparently had not known that Hitler was dead. But the British
accepted the idea with enthusiasm. "The Foreign Office took the
view that it was 'extremely unlikely' Hitler's death would have
been announced by the Germans if it had not actually occurred,
the [anonymous Foreign Office] commentator said."8
While the certainty of the British media set the tone for other
countries in the Empire, such as Canada and Australia, scepticism
was widespread in the United States. An editorial in the New
York Times cautioned:
"The Nazis have made lies so much a part of their politics, and
the reports about Hitler's alleged doubles have been so widely
spread, that these announcements are bound to leave in many
minds that the master liar is attempting to perpetrate one last great
hoax on the world in an effort to save himself, and perhaps prepare
the way for his return at a later and more auspicious time."9
The Salamanca Republican-Press wrote in the same vein:
"The German radio is a creature of the Nazi regime, and one of
the Nazi principles is that lying is not only permissible but
praiseworthy if it will further Nazi purposes. Some such
announcement as this would be a natural ruse if Hitler decided to
do what he has been reported to have planned to do—disappear,
and 'go underground', there to plan further crimes."10
In his war column published on the same page, DeWitt
Mackenzie asserted:
"The story of Hitler's death is almost to [sic] good to be true, and
certainly can't be accepted until proof is forthcoming, because
there's such a strong possibility of trickery."11
A Gallup poll subsequently established that 68 per cent of those
surveyed questioned whether Hitler was really dead.12
However, the question of whether Hitler was really dead was
instantly eclipsed by the question of how he had died. This time,
the New York Times was at the least sceptical end of the spectrum,
asserting in its editorial column that "there seems to be no good
reason to doubt that Hitler…died as the [German] announcement
says he did". 13 The editorial made the persuasive point that such a
death would have helped "perpetuate the legend which formed the
core of Nazi propaganda and by which [Hitler] rose to power—
the legend that he and the Nazis were shining knights in armor
fighting for European civilization against bolshevism—'to their
last breath'." (My italics)
At the other extreme, a British Foreign Office spokesman
dismissed the idea that Hitler had gone
down fighting as the "most complete
n o n s e n s e " . 1 4 To support this
conclusion, the spokesman revealed
that several days earlier, "Himmler
was said to have given the
information that Hitler was likely to
die within 48 hours".15 He had given
this information to a Swedish contact,
Count Folke Bernadotte, who later
claimed that on this occasion
Himmler had told him that he planned
to create "a Hitler legend which, after
the fall of the Third Reich, would
play the same part as the 'stab in the
back' phrase after the peace of
Versailles".16 If Himmler really had said this, Bernadotte must
have relayed the information to the Allies very quickly, for, even
before anyone could even be sure that Hitler was dead, the
priority had shifted to insisting that Hitler "had met death in a
manner which would thwart any die-hard Nazi attempt to build a
Wagnerian legend about him".17
Intriguingly, an Associated Press report from London that was
published in the Toronto Globe and Mail on 2 May 1945 asserted
that Doenitz's claim that Hitler had died a hero's death had been
denounced by a "ghost voice":
"Doenitz eulogized Hitler as a man who had dedicated his life
to Germany and to warring against 'Bolshevism', and who now
had died a 'hero's death'. A powerful ghost voice interrupted him,
shouting: 'This is a lie!' The ghost voice continued to heckle
throughout the Doenitz speech."18
Whether this report of a "ghost voice" is true or not, it shows
that the Foreign Office was anxious from the first to cast doubt on
claims that Hitler had died as a result of enemy action.
The next day, 3 May, probably at the request of his political
adviser, John Wheeler-Bennett of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs (the British equivalent of the Council on
Foreign Relations), US General Dwight D. Eisenhower laid his
considerable prestige behind what seemed at the time to be the
best alternative theory of Hitler's demise. He backed up the
Foreign Office statement, explaining that early on the morning of

36 • NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008

24 April Himmler had told Count Bernadotte that Hitler was "a The suicide theory was also a weapon of psychological warfare
dying man" and that Himmler's intelligence chief, Walter on the German population. To understand the propaganda impact
Schellenberg, had told Bernadotte that Hitler was "suffering from of the Hitler suicide legend on the German mind, it is important to
a brain hemorrhage". 19 Initially, therefore, the Allies inclined understand that, for many if not most Germans, the idea that
towards the view that Hitler had died of natural causes, in effect Hitler had taken his own life was deeply repugnant as it
taking Himmler's word over Doenitz's. A BBC announcer also contradicted everything they believed he had stood for. When
told the world that Hitler had died of a stroke—information that General Krebs gave him the news, General Helmuth Weidling
had been leaked that same day at the San Francisco conference by recalled thinking: "So we have been fighting for five-and-a-half
the British Foreign Minister, Sir Anthony Eden.20 years for someone who committed suicide. Having drawn us into
However, the Allies were not merely prejudiced from the start this terrible disaster, he himself chose the easy way out and left us
against any account of Hitler's fate that might have fuelled the to fend for ourselves."26
enthusiasm of the Nazi underground resistance, but were also At the other end of the military hierarchy, sixteen-year-old
biased in favour of the most ignominious account possible. Thus Dieter Borkowski, who had been among the Hitler Youth recruits
the idea that Hitler had died a natural death began being deflated fighting to defend Berlin to the last, felt drained of the desire to
as soon as evidence emerged that Hitler had not been in bad live. "These words make me feel sick, as if I have to vomit," he
health at all. On 7 May, the Baltimore Sun stated that according wrote. "I think that my life has no sense any more. What was this
to Major Erwin Giesing (Hitler's brain, ear, nose and throat battle for, what were the deaths of so many people for? Life has
specialist, who had seen him on 15 February apparently become worthless, for if Hitler
1945), Hitler had been "in unusually good has shot himself, the Russians will have
physical condition for a man of his age" and finally won... Has the Fuehrer not betrayed
had certainly not died of a brain his own Volk then after all?"27
haemorrhage.21 Reports pouring cold water The suicide legend was therefore used to
on the theory that Hitler had been ill and had discredit Hitler in the eyes of his own
probably died a natural death or had been ...it is important to followers and stifle their urge to resist
euthanased continued to be published foreign occupation.
whenever the opportunity arose.22
understand that, There was so much haste to assign to Hitler
But what really brought about the rapid for many if not most what was thought to be a fitting end that few
demise of the natural death theory were the people stopped to ask such obvious questions
revelations of the most important member of
Germans, the idea as how Dr Fritzsche knew that Hitler had
the regime to have been captured alive thus that Hitler had taken committed suicide, whether the Soviets could
far: Dr Hans Fritzsche. have pressured him into saying this, or
Dr Fritzsche, Goebbels's deputy in the his own life was whether the suicide story could have been a
Propaganda Ministry and Germany's deeply repugnant cover story for Hitler's escape. Given
leading radio propagandist, was taken Dr Fritzsche's status as the most
into custody by the Soviets on 2 May as it contradicted important man in the
after he had formally handed the city everything P r o p a g a n d a m i n i s t e r i u m after Dr
over to them in a ceremony in the Goebbels, it is self-evident that nothing
Tiergarten. The next morning, 3 May, they believed he he told the Soviets immediately after the
the Soviets issued a communiqué stating had stood for. regime collapsed can be regarded as
that Dr Fritzsche had made a deposition free of the possibility of propagandistic
in which he declared that Hitler, Dr deception. Yet in London and
Goebbels and General Hans Krebs had Washington, where throughout the war
all committed suicide in the bunker. 23 the view had been taken that the Nazis
Although the Soviets were duly were unconscionable liars, there was a
sceptical—Moscow state radio suggested dramatic shift away from scepticism.
that it was "another Fascist trick" The idea that Hitler had committed
designed to facilitate Hitler's escape—the suicide was so appealing that any Nazi
suicide story was at once taken up by the western press.24 who claimed to know that Hitler had committed suicide never
Intriguingly, there is evidence that the public was preconditioned risked having his or her veracity impugned. Clearly, all Nazis were
to accept the suicide theory. As early as 31 March 1945, the Globe liars—except those who told the Allies what they wanted to hear.
and Mail published a Canadian Press report headlined "Expect
Hitler To Be Suicide". Datelined "Emmerich, March 30", the Operation Trevor-Roper
piece stated that a rumour was current among German troops to the The fact that Hitler's corpse had apparently not been found in
effect that Hitler would commit suicide. In any event, the suicide Berlin caused considerable consternation in the Western press. A
story was an immense boon to Anglo–American propaganda, since Toronto Daily Star editorial commented anxiously on 18 July:
Hitler's resort to suicide could be used to convey a message about "It is becoming apparent that indisputable proof of Hitler's
the nature of Nazism itself: death either during the past ten weeks or at some early future date,
"When the American journalist William L. Shirer, who had if he should still be alive, is highly desirable for psychological as
been living as a correspondent in Berlin until 1941, learned of well as for practical reasons. Unless his demise is beyond
Hitler's death by suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery argument...the world is in for a potentially dangerous Hitler
on 30 April 1945, he declared: 'In fact, I have always been certain legend. This might become a psychological weapon in the efforts
myself that that was what he wanted to do in the end,' thereby of German leaders eventually to restore the self-confidence and
seeing the Third Reich as an ultimately suicidal regime."25 revive the truculence of this people who for so long have been

FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 37

intolerable disturbers of international peace."28 (My italics) "When I was released by the Americans I read historian Trevor-
Indeed, the very title of the editorial, "To Destroy Hitler, Roper's book, 'The Last Days of Hitler'. Throughout the book like a
Whether Man or Myth", implies that it was considered as red line, runs an eyewitness report by Hanna Reitsch about the final
important to destroy Hitler "the myth" as Hitler "the man". days in the bunker. I never said it. I never wrote it. I never signed
By mid-1945, the public was being asked to choose between a it. It was something they invented. Hitler died with total dignity."29
proliferating number of escape stories and the suicide theory. This report, dated 8 October 1945, was written by Reitsch's
Given that the escape stories were outlandish if not often patently interrogator, Captain Robert E. Work (Air Division,
ridiculous, the public was given the impression that only the Headquarters, United States Forces in Austria, Air Interrogation
suicide theory had any evidence to support it and deserved to be Unit), and published for the first time in, of all places, Public
taken seriously. Opinion Quarterly in 1946–47.30
The British response to the burgeoning Hitler escape stories was The second case was that of nurse Erna Flegel. On 23
not long in coming. In September 1945, Brigadier Dick White, November 1945, several American intelligence agents took Flegel
commander of the Intelligence Bureau in the British Zone of out for a six-course dinner, the result of which was a five-page
Occupation, commissioned Major Hugh Trevor-Roper, a young statement in English which is presented as a summary of the
Oxford-trained historian who, since 1943, had supervised the work information she allegedly imparted during her "interrogation".
of the Secret Intelligence Service's Radio Intelligence Section However, Flegel neither wrote the statement herself nor signed
(RIS), to investigate, at least ostensibly, the circumstances of i t . 31 In fact, no one can be said to vouch for this document
Hitler's alleged death. This was the opening because, despite its having been declassified,
phase of the British establishment's the names of the persons responsible for it,
fabrication of a narrative of the last days of including the name of the agency for which
the Third Reich that made short work of they worked, remain blacked out.
Hitler "the myth". If this approach was typical, then Trevor-
Given that his only previous publication Roper's chief sources were summaries of
was a biography of a 17th-century English information that had already been predigested
archbishop, William Laud, and that he for him by American intelligence
neither read nor spoke German, Trevor-
This was the opening operatives—involving what distortions and
Roper was a curious choice for such a task. phase of the British attempts at ironing out inconsistencies we
What's more, as the world saw in the 1980s, will probably never know. Given that there
he authenticated the spurious "Hitler
establishment's were few bunker survivors in British hands
Diaries", even though the task of fabrication of and that Trevor-Roper had no access to
determining the authenticity of a single bunker survivors in Soviet hands, his task
document would have been much simpler a narrative of the basically appears to have been that of creating
than that of establishing the truth about last days of the a coherent narrative out of information
Hitler's demise. that he was being spoonfed and that he
During the last three months of 1945, Third Reich that had no means of assessing himself.
according to the official story, Trevor- made short work of There is no reason to believe that any of
Roper and a team of intelligence agents the evidence that reached Trevor-Roper
travelled through Germany, tracking Hitler "the myth". did so with the active consent of the
down and interrogating bunker witnesses. My impression is that in
survivors. However, this procedure did 1945, captured Nazis were little more
not bear a great deal of fruit, probably than the puppets of their Allied captors;
because most survivors were interned in they could be made to say anything their
Soviet prisons and concentration camps. captors wanted them to say, and if they
In addition to uncovering the alleged objected there was nothing they could
diary of Hitler's valet Heinz Linge, do about it anyway.
Trevor-Roper achieved only one coup: Strikingly, Trevor-Roper made his
scoring interviews with Gerda Christian, "conclusions" public less than two
who had been one of Hitler's secretaries, and Else Krueger, who months after he'd begun investigating the case. At a press
had been Bormann's secretary. conference on 1 November 1945, Trevor-Roper (who remained
Surprisingly, Trevor-Roper seems not to have interviewed any anonymous at this stage and was referred to in print merely as "a
witnesses who had fallen into American hands, which means the young British intelligence officer") presented reporters with a
better part of those to be found outside Soviet prisons. It appears statement that consisted of little more than a narrative of the last
that instead of allowing him to meet with them, American week or so of Hitler's life. It described how Hitler had committed
intelligence operatives interviewed them and passed copies of their suicide, probably by shooting himself in the mouth. 32 Although
reports to him. In one particularly flagrant case, the Americans Trevor-Roper told the reporters that so far he had spoken to about
furnished Trevor-Roper with partly fabricated testimony; in another, 20 witnesses, the statement did not name even one of them .
they supplied information that had been obtained in such unusual Nonetheless, reporters probably left the conference under the
conditions that it, too, must be considered suspect. erroneous impression that the version of Hitler's last days that he
The first case was that of the famous German aviatrix Hanna had provided was backed up by the testimony of multiple
Reitsch. In an interview with Ron Laytner that she authorised for witnesses. Yet he had not found a single new eyewitness to the
publication only after her death, Reitsch stated explicitly that at critical events—Hitler's suicide and cremation; all he had done was
least part of the account attributed to her in The Last Days of take Kempka's testimony as gospel truth and discount Karnau's.
Hitler had been fabricated: The final section of the Trevor-Roper statement rejected

38 • NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008

theories that Hitler could have escaped Berlin. In this section, it British plan to enshrine anti-Nazi propaganda as historical fact.
becomes glaringly obvious that his investigation had been As we saw in part one, the first eyewitnesses to go public were
designed to lead to predetermined conclusions. Here we learn, Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempka and RSD bodyguard Hermann
first of all, that Trevor-Roper assumed that Hitler's fate had been Karnau. After Kempka's veracity was called into question by
entirely determined by last-minute contingencies. According to Karnau's claims, Karnau's story virtually disappeared and
this line of reasoning, Hitler could not have escaped the Kempka's story was extolled as the more authoritative. Indeed,
Chancellery because this or that avenue of escape had been Kempka's evidence not only became the basis for Trevor-Roper's
rendered impossible (or at least difficult, which for Trevor-Roper book but Kempka was also endorsed at Nuremberg as the sole
appeared to mean the very same thing). Trevor-Roper source of reliable information concerning Hitler's demise.
circumscribed Hitler's exit possibilities by means of The primary reason Kempka's story won such a positive
generalisations that are all extremely questionable. He wrote, for reception from the Anglo–American authorities was that Kempka
example, that it would have been impossible for Hitler to have was the sole source of evidence that appeared to support the suicide
been flown out of Berlin because his "two pilots" remained in the theory (Karnau simply referred to the cremation he had witnessed).
bunker and "took part in the attempted escape on the night of 1 Kempka also contradicted Soviet claims that Hitler could have
May".33 This is all very well, so long as you presuppose that escaped. In his 4 July 1945 interview record, he declared:
Hitler would never have permitted anyone else to fly him out of "[With a] statement reported to have been made by the Russian
Berlin or that one of the pilots could not have left the bunker and Marshall Chukov [ sic] that Hitler and Eva Braun could have
returned to it afterwards. escaped from the Berlin area by air, I can't agree. On 4/30/45 and
Trevor-Roper confined his discussion of Hitler's escape two or three days previous, no one could possibly have left the
possibilities to planes and cars. inner parts of Berlin by air. There was
However, in January 1946, General a heavy artillery fire on all the inner
Helmuth Weidling, who was interned parts of Berlin during those days.
in a Soviet prison camp, furnished a Neither did I hear about a plane
long statement for the Soviets in The explanation that arriving or leaving after the 25th or
which he conceded that he had grown best accounts for events, 26th of April 1945."36
sceptical about the suicide theory. Unfortunately for Kempka, one of
He had meditated on the problem of therefore, is that the best-attested events of the last days
Hitler's escape possibilities and Kempka sought to of the Third Reich is that of a flight
concluded: piloted by General Robert Ritter von
"On the night of 29/30 April there suppress his knowledge Greim and Hanna Reitsch that arrived
were still opportunities to leave— of the two flights. in Berlin on the morning of 26 April.
through the Zoo underground station The same pair took off from Berlin in
in western Berlin and through the the early hours of 29 April. Reitsch
Friedrichstrasse station in the north. herself not only spoke about the two
One could have escaped relatively flights on numerous occasions between
safely through the underground tunnels."34 1945 and her death in 1979 but also devoted a chapter to them in her
Can we really believe that this possibility never occurred to autobiography Flying Is My Life.37 Given that the evidence from
Trevor-Roper? Since it's unlikely that he did not know that Berlin other sources is abundant enough to establish that they actually took
possessed an extensive underground railway system, it seems that place, there is something extremely suspicious about Kempka's
the only escape possibilities Trevor-Roper was interested in assertion that no such flights would have been possible.
talking about were those he could exclude. There is no reason to jump to the conclusion, however
Perhaps Trevor-Roper's most conspicuous flaw was his haste to tempting, that Kempka must have lied about being in the
discount the possibility that the eyewitnesses could have put their Chancellery during the regime's final days. He could have been
heads together to work up a coherent story to cover up for Hitler's temporarily absent from the bunker on a mission. If so, he had
escape. In his report, he commented: returned by the afternoon of 30 April. As we saw in part one,
"It is considered quite impossible that the versions of the several eyewitnesses have provided evidence establishing
various eye-witnesses can represent a concerted cover story; they Kempka's presence at a cremation held in the Chancellery garden
were all too busy planning their own safety to have been able or at around 3.00 pm that afternoon. SS- Hauptsturmfuehrer Karl
disposed to learn an elaborate charade, which they could still Schneider acknowledged speaking to Kempka at the Chancellery
maintain after five months of isolation from each other, and under garage on the evening of 1 May. He told the Soviets on 19 May
detailed and persistent cross-examination."35 1945 that on this occasion Kempka had told him that Hitler was
This argument makes about as much sense as the claim that there "allegedly dead".38
can be no such thing as an orchestra because there is no way that a The explanation that best accounts for events, therefore, is that
large number of people could ever perform a complex piece of music Kempka sought to suppress his knowledge of the two flights. When
such as a symphony at the same time. In any case, the "charade" was Kempka first gave his story to the Americans in June 1945, he had
hardly that "elaborate". As we saw in part one, there are many no reason to believe that they knew anything at all about them.
significant differences between the recollections of the various There is a very good reason why Kempka would not have wanted to
eyewitnesses. The SS orchestra was playing the same tune, to be mention these flights: the cover story—that Greim flew to Berlin to
sure, but not always in the same key. receive instructions from Hitler, who had just made him the new
head of the Luftwaffe—is preposterous. Why would Hitler, who was
Kempka unravelled anxious for everyone else to leave Berlin, want someone to come to
Operation Trevor-Roper is best seen, therefore, not as a bona him? Why would he have been so keen to talk to the head of an
fide investigation of Hitler's fate but as the major stage in the almost nonexistent entity? The official story fails to justify Greim

FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 39

and Reitsch's extremely dangerous flight. It also does not explain According to Reitsch, the flight reached Rechlin at about 3.00
why the pair's flight from the Luftwaffe air base at Rechlin near am. Here, she states, Greim attended a conference. Then she and
Berlin to Gatow airport on Berlin's periphery was accompanied by Greim flew—apparently using a different aircraft—to Ploen, a
an escort of 30–40 fighter jets—in other words, the extant Luftwaffe distance of some 400 miles. Their next destinations were Dobbin,
virtually in its entirety. Clearly, the flight had a more serious where Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was,41 Luebeck, Ploen again
purpose than we have been led to believe. One writer believes that ("to see Doenitz"), and finally Koeniggraetz (in Bohemia, now
Greim and Reitsch ferried Martin Bormann out of Berlin.39 Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic).42 If we assume, as I think
However, in a striking passage in his memoirs, former we should, that Hitler was present during at least the first of these
Volkssturm member Dieter H. B. Protsch relates an incident that several stages, we can say that at Rechlin the trail goes cold.
took place in Berlin on 29 April 1945. That day, which happened If Hitler left Berlin with Greim and Reitsch, then that would
to be his thirteenth birthday, in the course of searching for food account for the series of bizarre events—the marriage to Eva
for his family he stumbled upon a basement occupied by several Braun, the writing of the Political Testament, the recurring
Waffen-SS men operating radio equipment who gave him bread rages—that have been enshrined in official history as "the last
and chocolate: days of the Third Reich". Obviously, Hitler's last days in the
"After some small talk about the family, they suddenly stopped bunker needed to be accounted for, and so a lurid series of
talking when the radio operator raised his hand to demand quiet. episodes had to be invented to fill in the yawning gap.
The 'Funker' (Radio Operator), wearing a head set, started smiling This three-part series has not tried to resolve the many
and stated that 'der Fuehrer' got his belated birthday present. He questions raised by these bizarre episodes for the obvious reason
explained further that he [Hitler] made it safely out of Berlin, that they all depend on an underlying assumption—that Hitler
flown out by his personal pilot Hanna Reitsch, Germany's best committed suicide in the bunker—which we feel we have shown
female test pilot. The report stated that she was flying a small one to be nothing but a propaganda fiction. ∞
engine, two or three seater plane, a so-called 'Fiseler [sic] Storch'."40
Thus the truth seems to be that, exactly as the Soviets About the Author:
subsequently alleged, Hitler did indeed make it out of Berlin— Giordan Smith is an independent academic from Sydney,
more or less around the time that the official story tells us that he Australia, with a special interest in modern German history. He
was still in the bunker dictating his Political Testament—and that can be contacted by email at giordansmith@gmail.com.
Erich Kempka knew precisely when and how this had taken place, The text of this article is available at the NEXUS website
but withheld the information from the Americans. (http://www.nexusmagazine.com).
Endnotes Normal On February 15", Hamilton Spectator, 33. ibid.
1. Globe and Mail, Toronto, 11 June 1945 7 May 1945 34. Hitler's Death, p. 238. I would observe
2. Joe Grigg, "Berlin Ruins Yield Bodies", 22. For example, Field Marshal Kesselring, that a living Hitler did not need to escape
Hamilton Spectator, 10 May 1945 who had last seen Hitler in mid-April when "he Berlin; for example, a courier carrying a box
3. Globe and Mail, 9 May 1945 appeared in excellent health"; Howard Cowan, with the Fuehrer's ashes in it could have taken
4. Ian Colvin, Chief of Intelligence, Victor "Kesselring Most Surprised Hitler Remained In it out of the city.
Gollancz, London, 1951, p. 214 Berlin", Hamilton Spectator, 10 May 1945 35. "Text of British Report Holding Hitler
5. Fred C. McKenzie, The Greatest Illusion: 23. Globe and Mail, 3 May 1945; Hamilton Ended His Life", New York Times, 1 November
The Death (?) of Adolf Hitler, 1995, quoted at: Spectator, 3 May 1945 1945
www.blackraiser.com/nredoubt/identity.htm 24. Globe and Mail, 3 May 1945 36. http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/imt/nca/nca-
6. Toronto Daily Star, 28 April 1945 25. Christian Goeschel, "Suicide at the End of 06/nca-06-3735-ps
7. Nevada State Journal, 29 April 1945 the Third Reich", Journal of Contemporary 37. See Hanna Reitsch, "The Last Journey to
8. Hamilton Spectator, 2 May 1945 History 2006; 41(1), p. 155 Berlin", in Flying Is My Life, Putnam's Sons,
9. New York Times, 2 May 1945 26. V. K. Vinogradov et al. (eds), Hitler's New York, 1954, pp. 220-37. The
10. Salamanca Republican-Press, 2 May 1945 Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Greim–Reitsch flights were not even the only
11. Salamanca Republican-Press, 2 May 1945 Files of the KGB, Chaucer Press, London, flights in and out of central Berlin in this
12. Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: 2005, p. 236 period. In her book, Reitsch refers to at least
Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of 27. Cited in Omer Bartov, Soldiers, Nazis, and
two others.
Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945, Simon & War in the Third Reich, Oxford University
38. Hitler's Death, p. 43.
Schuster, New York, 2002, p. 226 Press, New York, 1991, p. 110
39. Carter P. Hydrick, Critical Mass: The Real
13. New York Times, 2 May 1945 28. "To Destroy Hitler, Whether Man or
Myth", Toronto Daily Star, 18 July 1945 Story of the Birth of the Atomic Bomb and the
14. Hamilton Spectator, 2 May 1945
15. Globe and Mail, 2 May 1945; Hamilton 29. Ron Laytner, "The First Astronaut Was A Nuclear Age, 1998, available online at:
Spectator, 2 May 1945 Woman", Edit International, http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/atom
16. Count Folke Bernadotte, "Accounts Of http://www.editinternational.com/printstory.php icbomb/chap12.htm
Fuehrer's Last Heroic Fight Are Pure Myth", ?cat=42f3cd58d6fc1&sub=44ee0674d77d6 40. Dieter H. B. Protsch, Be All You Can Be:
Hamilton Spectator, 5 September 1945 30. Robert E. Work, "Last Days in Hitler's Air From a Hitler Youth in WWII to a US Army
17. Hamilton Spectator, 3 May 1945 Raid Shelter", Public Opinion Quarterly Green Beret, Trafford Publishing, 2004, p. 32
18. Globe and Mail, 2 May 1945 1946–1947 Winter; 10(4):565-81. A different 41. Keitel confirms in his memoirs, p. 261, that
19. Drew Middleton, "Story of Hitler's Death translation of the same report is included in he was at Dobbin this day, thus confirming
As Hero Declared a Lie", Globe and Mail, 3 Hitler's Death, although without the least Reitsch's reliability. He adds the striking
May 1945. However, it is probably worth acknowledgement that Reitsch had repudiated it. information, which Reitsch does not mention,
noting that, according to Bernadotte's own 31. The complete document can be viewed that Himmler was at Dobbin, too. Wilhelm
account, Himmler had told him that "Hitler was online at: Keitel, In The Service Of The Reich: The
probably already dead and that, if not, he would www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/nurseflegel1.html Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel, ed. Walter
be within the next few days". 32. "Text of British Report Holding Hitler Goerlitz, Focal Point Publications, London,
20. Toronto Telegram, 2 May 1945 Ended His Life", New York Times, 1 November 2003
21. Lee McCardell, "Assert Hitler Almost 1945 42. Reitsch, Flying Is My Life, pp. 235-36

40 • NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY – MARCH 2008